232 ENGLISH LANGUAGE 



More or less work has been done here, but mostly on Shakespeare, 

 and none of it in any way final. 



We have now reached the Modern Period, in which, if we have 

 few scientific investigations, we have at all events our own know- 

 ledge of the rules. Our programme, however, will be heinously 

 incomplete if we pass over the eighteenth century the age of prose 

 and reason. For this time there are, of course, no treatises whatever 

 (I mean, by modern investigators) ; for it has been tacitly assumed 

 that there is nothing to treat. Since, however, there must be some 

 means of getting from the license of the Elizabethans to the prim 

 positiveness of the lore that our children learn at school, it behooves 

 us to trace the establishment of the somewhat rigid dogmas that hold 

 sway nowadays, and we may expect to find what we are after in the 

 age whose shibboleths were correctness and urbanity. Once more we 

 shall recognize the potency of French and Latin, this time as regu- 

 lating forces rather than as temptations to innovate. 



Thus I have drawn up, roughly, to be sure, but with exactness 

 enough for our purpose, a programme for that series of Syntactical 

 Studies the lack of which is the greatest desideratum in the whole 

 circle of English linguistics. 



I forewarned you that three quarters of an hour would not be 

 long enough even to enumerate all the problems with regard to the 

 English language which we and our philological progeny may hope 

 to settle within the next hundred years, and all the desiderata which 

 we and they may undertake to supply. I have said nothing, for 

 example, of the modern dialects, which, after serving as a parade- 

 ground for harmless and sometimes useful amateurishness for a cen- 

 tury or two, have just begun to attract scientific attention. Few of 

 us have had the fortitude to spend our days and nights over the 

 masterpiece of the chalchenteric Ellis, but everybody can consult 

 the Dialect Dictionary, and there is hope for the years to come. 

 It is, to be sure, a bit depressing to find that the author of a very 

 recent article in a journal of the highest class has apparently never 

 heard of this conspicuous and indispensable book, and depends for 

 his English material on the flimsy complications of Wright and 

 Halliwell. But we are used to this kind of thing, and must not let 

 our hearts be troubled overmuch. The dialects of our own country, 

 too, are receiving some notice, and light is gradually being shed on 

 the interesting and delicate subject of the English language in 

 America. Unfortunately much energy is still wasted in polemics 

 with regard to alleged Americanisms and counter-irritating Briticisms. 

 But the fray is less noisy than it used to be. 



To phonetics pure and simple I have referred only by the way 



